#The lore is just bad and kinda racist or at least tone deaf

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Question, new watcher to miraculous. Why are the kwamis in the chinese miracle box not chinese? And I know that it has the zodiacs, but their powers sometimes intersect with each other, and some of their themes/aspects somehow doesn't connect with the animal that the kwamis are being represented with. Like Pollen with action, I heard that it used to be subjugation which I think fits better with the bee theme. Anyways, what I am saying is, why is the magic system of miraculous so messy and cluttered?

Run, newbie!!! Run!!! Save yourself!!! Don't be drawn in!!!

In all seriousness, your best bet is to pretend that the miracle box isn't tied to a specific culture because it's culture as decoration and nothing more. There is no deep logic to anything about it. I'd even go so far as to label it cultural appropriation because of how surface level it all is. A child watching the show won't even learn what the Chinese zodiac is because no one ever refers to the Kwamis as such or discusses what the zodiac is or even uses the word "zodiac." That's all a fanon addition.

I've talked about this in way more depth in the past, so here are a few relevant posts from my "lore discussion" tag. I'm pretty good at remembering to use that one when I feel like a post adds something new to the topic, so feel free to browse, just note that it's about all the lore and not just this part of it. Note that some of the chosen posts reference each other, so I'm just giving them to you in chronological order to save you some time.

Post 1

Post 2

Post 3

The bee did indeed used to be subjugation and was retconned to action for some reason. I've heard that it was to be something more accessible to kids, but we've still got things like Jubilation and Transmission in the roster so I'm not sure if that's true. If it is, it's silly because we've still got things like Jubilation and Transmission in the roster.

As for why there are all the repeat powers and other such nonsense, as best I can tell, they didn't actually come up with any lore for the Kwamis' powers outside of Tikki and Plagg and maybe some of the original five that also inhabit the top of the box (bee, peacock, butterfly, turtle, and fox). All of the other powers were made up on the fly and based around trying to fit the power to the kid who would get it since the show took the approach of "if you don't have enough for everyone, then you don't have enough to share with anyone." Great for candy, terrible for magical items.

Rose is optimistic so she gets a power that's basically optimism, Nathaniel the artist gets a creation power, and so on. This is, of course, a terrible way to approach lore as you're not trying to balance your magic system in the slightest. You're just making shit up as you go, meaning you get contradictory powers and repeats and all other kinds of crap. I've talked about this a few times around different powers, but I'm particularly fond of this lecture dunking on the peacock because I hate it so much.